Oregon tobacco fine upheld

PORTLAND – The Oregon Supreme Court for a third time has allowed a $79.5 million punitive-damages judgment against Philip Morris, an award twice struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, which suggested it was excessive.

The case will go back to the nation’s highest court, the tobacco maker said. Business groups have watched the case closely for its potential as a precedent for large jury awards in product liability suits.

The money was for the family of Jesse Williams, a former Portland janitor who started smoking during a 1950s Army hitch and died in 1997 six months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

The Oregon court’s decision Thursday did not take issue with the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling, which said that when juries assess punitive damages, they can punish a defendant only for the harm done to the people suing, not for harm done to others who aren’t part of the case.

But the Oregon court said jury instructions proposed by Philip Morris at the trial had other defects, so a judge’s decision not to allow them was correct.

The instructions about punitive damages have been at the center of the legal battle over the suit brought by Williams’ widow, Mayola. A jury in Portland made the award in 1999.

The Oregon court said Thursday that Philip Morris and the tobacco industry worked during the 1950s on a “program of disinformation” to create doubt about the dangers of smoking. Williams, the court said, “learned from watching television that smoking did not cause lung cancer,” but, once he came down with it, said the “cigarette people” had lied to him.